Rank Your All-Time Favorite Jacqueline Woodson Books

*Finalist for the National Book Award *

When Lonnie was seven years old, his parents died in a fire. Now he's eleven, and he still misses them terribly. And he misses his little sister, Lili, who was put into a different foster home because "not a lot of people want boys-not foster boys that ain't babies." But Lonnie hasn't given up. His foster mother, Miss Edna, is growing on him. She's already raised two sons and she seems to know what makes them tick. And his teacher, Ms. Marcus, is showing him ways to put his jumbled feelings on paper.

Told entirely through Lonnie's poetry, we see his heartbreak over his lost family, his thoughtful perspective on the world around him, and most of all his love for Lili and his determination to one day put at least half of their family back together. Jacqueline Woodson's poignant story of love, loss, and hope is lyrically written and enormously accessible.

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling and National Book Award winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years.

Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything until it wasn t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant a part of a future that belonged to them.

But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.

Like Louise Meriwether s Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood the promise and peril of growing up and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives."

From a three-time Newbery Honor author, a novel that was awarded the 2001 Coretta Scott King award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

For Lafayette and his brothers, the challenges of growing up in New York City are compounded by the facts that they've lost their parents and it's up to eldest brother Ty'ree to support the boys, and middle brother Charlie has just returned home from a correctional facility.

Lafayette loves his brothers and would do anything if they could face the world as a team. But even though Ty'ree cares, he's just so busy with work and responsibility. And Charlie's changed so much that his former affection for his little brother has turned to open hostility.

Now, as Lafayette approaches 13, he needs the guidance and answers only his brothers can give him. The events of one dramatic weekend force the boys to make the choice to be there for each other--to really see each other--or to give in to the pain and problems of every day.

Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. " Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.

**A Newbery Honor Book

A beautiful and moving novel from a three-time Newbery Honor-winning author **

Hope is the thing with feathers starts the poem Frannie is reading in school. Frannie hasn't thought much about hope. There are so many other things to think about. Each day, her friend Samantha seems a bit more holy. There is a new boy in class everyone is calling the Jesus Boy. And although the new boy looks like a white kid, he says he s not white. Who is he?

During a winter full of surprises, good and bad, Frannie starts seeing a lot of things in a new light her brother Sean s deafness, her mother s fear, the class bully s anger, her best friend s faith and her own desire for the thing with feathers.

Jacqueline Woodson once again takes readers on a journey into a young girl s heart and reveals the pain and the joy of learning to look beneath the surface.

D Foster showed up a few months before Tupac got shot that first time and left us the summer before he died. The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend's lives, the world opens up for them. D comes from a world vastly different from their safe Queens neighborhood, and through her, the girls see another side of life that includes loss, foster families and an amount of freedom that makes the girls envious. Although all of them are crazy about Tupac Shakur's rap music, D is the one who truly understands the place where he's coming from, and through knowing D, Tupac's lyrics become more personal for all of them. The girls are thirteen when D's mom swoops in to reclaim Dand as magically as she appeared, she now disappears from their lives. Tupac is gone, too, after another shooting; this time fatal. As the narrator looks back, she sees lives suspended in time, and realizes that even all-too-brief connections can touch deeply.

**A powerfully moving novel from a three-time Newbery Honor-winning author

A National Book Award Finalist**

Evie Thomas is not who she used to be. Once she had a best friend, a happy home and a loving grandmother living nearby. Once her name was Toswiah. Now, everything is different. Her family has been forced to move to a new place and change their identities. But that's not all that has changed. Her once lively father has become depressed and quiet. Her mother leaves teaching behind and clings to a new-found religion. Her only sister is making secret plans to leave. And Evie, struggling to find her way in a new city where kids aren't friendly and the terrain is as unfamiliar as her name, wonders who she is. Jacqueline Woodson weaves a fascinating portrait of a thoughtful young girl's coming of age in a world turned upside down

*The stunning companion to the National Book Award finalist--from a three-time Newbery Honor winning author *

Twelve-year-old Lonnie is finally feeling at home with his foster family. But because he s living apart from his little sister, Lili, he decides it s his job to be the rememberer and write down everything that happens while they re growing up. Lonnie s musings are bittersweet; he s happy that he and Lili have new families, but though his new family brings him joy, it also brings new worries. With a foster brother in the army, concepts like Peace have new meaning for Lonnie.Told through letters from Lonnie to Lili, this thought-provoking companion to Jacqueline Woodson s National Book Award finalist Locomotion tackles important issues in captivating, lyrical language. Lonnie s reflections on family, loss, love and peace will strike a note with readers of all ages."

You are so light you move with the wind and the snow.... And it lifts you up--over a world of sadness and anger and fear. Over a world of first kisses and hands touching and someone you're falling in love with. She's there now. Right there... Miah and Ellie were in love. Even though Miah was black and Ellie was white, they made sense together. Then Miah was killed. This was the ending. And it was the beginning of grief for the many people who loved Miah. Now his mother has stopped trying, his friends are lost and Ellie doesn't know how to move on. And there is Miah, watching all of this--unable to let go. How do we go on after losing someone we love? This is the question the living and the dead are asking. With the help of each other, the living will come together. Miah will sit beside them. They will feel Miah in the wind, see him in the light, hear him in their music. And Miah will watch over them, until he is sure each of those he loved is all right. This beautiful sequel to Jacqueline Woodson's If You Come Softly explores the experiences of those left behind after tragedy. It is a novel in which through hope, understanding and love, healing begins.

Hurricane Katrina took her mother and grandmother. And even though Laurel Daneau has moves on to a new life--one that includes a new best friend, a spot on the cheerleading squad, and dating the co-captain of the football team--she can't get past the pain of that loss. Then her new boyfriend introduces her to meth, and Laurel is instantly seduced by its spell, the way it erases, even if only temporarily, her memories. Soon Laurel is completely hooked, a shell of her former self, desperate to be whole again, but lacking the strength to break free. But with the help of a new friend--and the loyalty of an old one--she is able to rewrite her own story and move on with her own life.

Dreamlike in quality and weaving flashbacks to the hurricane in with Laurel's present-day struggles, this is a stunning novel that readers won't want to miss."